FRANKFORT, Ky. — The revised pension reform bill will not mandate that any current or future Kentucky public employees be moved into 401(k)-like savings plans because the move would actually cost more money, Senate President Robert Stivers said on Wednesday.

A move from traditional pension plans with defined benefits to 401(k)-like plans was the foundation of the reform proposal released in October by Gov. Matt Bevin, Stivers and then-House Speaker Jeff Hoover.

But that proposal, which also included numerous reductions in benefits, was met with strong opposition. Leaders of the House and Senate Republican majorities have been revising the plan for months.

Stivers, a Manchester Republican, told reporters Wednesday afternoon that the revised bill will mandate no move at all to 401(k)-like plans.

An actuarial analysis of the move, Stivers said, showed the move would not save dollars. "It did not score well," Stivers said. "... The expenditures were greater by closing out a plan and then converting" to a 401(k)-like benefit.

House Speaker David Osborne, a Prospect Republican, declined to comment on the contents of the pending bill. But when asked if moving public employees to 401(k)-like plans would be more costly, Osborne said, "We have been getting data that would suggest that it actually does cost money to switch everyone to a 401(k)-style."

Stivers said earlier this week he hoped the revised bill would be filed this week. But he's no longer so hopeful. "We should have it by the first of next week," Stivers said.

As for other details of the pending bill, Stivers said, "It will not contain a five-year COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) freeze for retired teachers." He did not offer further details on this.

The proposal of last October would have suspended for five years annual 1.5 percent cost of living increases in retirement benefits for teachers, and also would not have granted the COLA to teachers who retire in the future during their first five years of retirement.

Stivers also said the pending bill will offer teachers hired in the future several "options" for the retirement plan in which they choose to participate.

In recent weeks Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer, of Georgetown, has said the revised bill would not include the mandate in last October's proposal that public employees be shifted to 401(k)-like plans after 27 years of service. But Stivers' comments Wednesday make clear that even future workers will not be required to be put into a 401(k)-like plan.

Bevin has said he strongly favors the move to 401(k)-style plans as the way to eventually eliminate the risk to taxpayers that Kentucky's current pension crisis is repeated in the future. Currently Kentucky's eight public pension plans carry unfunded liabilities of more than $43 billion.

But critics of the move to 401(k)-like plans have been arguing for months that closing existing pension plans to new members, and losing the contributions of any new members, would be more costly to the pension plans.

Bevin's spokesman Woody Maglinger did not immediately respond to an emailed request seeking a response to Stivers' comments Wednesday.